Linux Mint and future directions

[lebusishu]

Hi all,

So after a year of fighting with Ubuntu and their stupid drastic changes with every release, I heard about Mint and MATE + Compiz and am officially sold. Converted all my machines already and things are working great.

I simply couldn't grasp Ubuntu's tendencies to REMOVE features with every release. For example I have been using Compiz's features to draw on the screen during presentations, Compiz's ability to assign arbitrary actions to my 17-button mouse, and have long relied on the fact that Gnome2 interface is NOT "smart" in order to increase productivity -- I can click menus in a fraction of a second if they don't change every time I open them. I have hundreds of other complaints about Ubuntu but I'm sure a lot of Mint users have had the same experiences so I'm not going to yak on about those.

However, I notice Mint has two versions, a Gnome 2-ish MATE and a Gnome 3-ish Cinnamon version. I've been using the MATE one. But what is the ultimate goal of having 2 versions? Is MATE a well-supported project intended to be continued, or is just a "transitional" release that is planned to die in another year before the whole world switches to evil tablet-like interfaces?

I guess what I'm getting at is, is providing a traditional computing interface with the freedom and myriad customization options that everyone had in Gnome2/KDE3 a central goal of Mint, or just an side effect of Mint dev lagging behind all the Unity nonsense? Is Mint really the Linux-for-Unity-haters that I've been looking for all along?

Thanks, and sorry if I made any incorrect assumptions!

[axel668]

Mate is not Gnome 2-ISH, Mate IS Gnome2, with everything renamed to avoid conflicts with Gnome3, but the approach is a very conservative - while I don't expect Mate to go away in the next couple of years, I also don't expect much innovation happening there. Cinnamon on the other hand is based on latest technology, i.e. GTK3 / Gnome3, and is continuously improved and developed, while still keeping to more traditional desktop metaphors (start menu, task pane, ...), so between Mate and Cinnamon, Cinnamon definitely is the future ...

Cinnamon was created AFTER Unity and Gnome3, with the very intention to provide an alternative to the more radical, tablet- oriented concepts of these desktop environments. Also, Mint has earned a reputation of listening to its users, so if there is a place for Unity and Gnome3 haters in the world, it is definitely Mint, in my opinion, and will be for a long time.

[741cc]

http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinnamon_% ... terface%29

http://mate-desktop.org/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MATE_%28de ... ronment%29

simple